It’s tempting to look at any new marketing trend as a cure-all. It’s just as tempting to completely give up on that trend when it doesn’t immediately live up to all of the hype.

Gartner created a model called the Hype Cycle to track any emerging technology as it goes from hero to zero and then ultimately somewhere in between. I first came across the Gartner Hype Cycle in 2008 while working at Method and thinking about how to talk about sustainability as a brand. There were a lot of me-too cleaning products suddenly claiming to be “eco-friendly” and we sensed disillusionment.

While “green cleaning” didn’t really classify as an emerging technology, we found it very useful to map the Hype Cycle and think about the shift from “Peak of Inflated Expectations” to “Trough of Disillusionment,” ultimately rising up a “Slope of Enlightenment” and maturing to a “Plateau of Productivity”. It helped us remember the long game and think about substance over catchy claims.

I think it’s useful to think about any marketing tactic or technology using this model too. Marketing continues to go through tremendous change and marketers will have to assess if and how to leverage every new trend that comes along.

It certainly feels like we’re in the “Trough of Disillusionment” with social media marketing. Even as social marketing budgets increase, businesses are struggling to tie social activities to business outcomes. Metrics are left unmeasured and ROI is frustratingly out of reach.

Gartner came out with an updated Digital Marketing Hype Cycle last summer and plotted Social Marketing technologies at the beginning of the trough.

As marketing continues to evolve and transform, I think we have to constantly keep the “Slope of Enlightenment” in mind. As much as we can, we have to continually look beyond the hype to the potential of how technologies may be used, not as a cure-all, but to help make the fundamentals stronger.

6 Comments

There is a growing hype around e-sports/online gaming marketing – it has an avid fan following and the potential for high reach at a reasonable price. Do you think such a platform goes through a hype cycle as well? Thanks

Love this. I’ve been involved in social since marketers first started using it. We’ve seen some great success, but as of late I’ve been slightly disappointed with performance. Good to know this tool will have it’s day once expectations are established properly.

The Gartner graphs are right, but to me they over complicate things.
In my experience is is as much about the ‘shiny new thing’ syndrome as second rate marketers and often starry eyed management grab for something on which to hang their hat rather than doing the grunt work of creatively gathering and analysing data, developing a hypothesis, testing, improving, and scaling.

Social media has just turned a decade and its use in business is even younger. Social business, digital transformation, marketing evolution… call it what you like, for it to take off, it’s core concepts need to be understood, adhered to and accepted by businesses worldwide. Right now, while many are in the education phase, some still in discovery… it’s the first movers (early adopters who stuck around, got it right and made it work) who are showing others how it’s done. There’s no doubting the potential of social. Exciting times ahead!

Impossible Software is a pioneer in customizable/personalized video. As such, we’ve lived the hype cycle and I think we’re now (after 6 years!) on the slope of enlightenment. We observe the phenomenon not only in what the market expects, and the use cases, but also in how we and others in this area have adapted business models, best practices, and product offerings. We are a very long way from 2009 when we first demonstrated *interactive* personalized streams!

But now we are seeing “competition” – the buzzword technology in visuals is Virtual Reality. As it climbs to the peak of expectations, it draws attention away from the now-provable benefits of customized video. C’est la guerre!

I did a multitouch attribution study last year across a sample of more than 500k transactions across a number of online retail sectors. I found that social media, whether it be organic or paid, played a role in <1% of those transactions. It was a surprising result given surveys I had seen that showed investing in social media and social media marketing were top priorities in 2015 for marketers.